Opportunities for Learning

The old Chinese proverb relates, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. But teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

That certainly applies to digital printing and other graphic-arts knowledge as well. Jared Smith, our own “Graphics on the Go” columnist, points to just this in his column this issue (see page xx), in relating how he hired a color-management consultant for his shop, then immediately had to bring that consultant back in because he had only bought ICC profiles rather than the training to do the profiling themselves. Once his shop learned how to execute the profiling in-house, he had much more control over his operation—not to mention a more profitable workflow.

The market as a whole offers a plethora of education and training opportunities – from manufacturers, suppliers and associations to tradeshows, conference groups and colleges. Typically, it comes down to the specific subject matter/topic you want trained in, and then locale; with many educational resources now available as webinars or in downloadable format, even locale can become less of a factor in choosing your best training. Additional factors to consider include pricing, the amount of time the training will take (does it take you or your staff away from day-to-day responsibilities?), and the quality of the training.

We’ve assembled the following list of education and training resources for your perusal, more than 40 in all. Note that this is a broad sampling of resources from around the marketplace and not intended to be comprehensive. Also note that we’ve not included here the training that is often included with the purchase of a printer; in our last surveys of manufacturers of printers (July and August issues), 60 percent of printer models had training standard, while an additional 28 percent listed training as optional.

Manufacturers and suppliers as educators Seeking training on a specific software, equipment, or technology? Then attending a training session or taking a course from that product’s manufacturer or supplier might be the way to go. What follows are more than 20 companies that have programs dedicated to training clients on specific products or providing educational resources for both the business and technical sides of a shop’s operations (in alpha order).